Body-cam footage confirms: Police are just plain more polite to white people [View all]

A new study of police in Oakland, California, demonstrates what systemic racism looks like. It might be invisible if you examine it one interaction at a time, but Stanford University researchers used body-cam footage to demonstrate that police used more respectful language toward white people than black people during traffic stops. 


An analysis of 981 traffic stops made by 245 Oakland officers in April 2014 found that officers were more apt to use terms of respect such as “sir,” “ma’am,” “please” and “thank you” when dealing with white motorists when compared to black ones. They apologized to white people more frequently for having to stop them, and expressed concern, telling them to “drive safe.”


After stopping black people, officers more often used terms deemed to be disrespectful, calling them by their first names, “bro” or “my man,” and instructing them to keep their hands on the wheel, the study found. [...]


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“In a traffic stop, if an officer is kind, courteous and discreet, that traffic stop is less likely to result in a loss of life,” she said. “Oftentimes when we talk about race and racism, we talk about individualized actions between people. But what Dr. Eberhardt’s study is really pointing to is the ways people’s individualized actions point to a systemic set of practices that has impacts on people’s lives.”

And while interactions with police carry life-and-death implications in a way that most others don’t, heightening the stakes of each interaction, consider that this respect differential is almost certainly not unique to police. If we put body-cams on cashiers and waiters and doctors and teachers and the strangers we encounter on the street, we’d probably find similar patterns. There’s no way it doesn’t wear on a person, like water dripping on a stone.

Read More:http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/6/6/1669392/-Body-cam-footage-confirms-Police-are-just-plain-more-polite-to-white-people

Seems to me some officers go out of their way to provoke black people at traffic stops and for even walking down the street for that matter.

*******“Oftentimes when we talk about race and racism, we talk about individualized actions between people. But what Dr. Eberhardt’s study is really pointing to is the ways people’s individualized actions point to a systemic set of practices that has impacts on people’s lives.”*******